I was quite disappointed when The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit theme was cancelled. When Lego also wrapped up the underwhelming Castle theme in 2014, this meant an end of an era. The era of medieval/fantasy themed sets. What followed was cuteness and… weirdness…
With cuteness I mean of course the Elven-Theme, which is by itself rather cute. But I can’t get over the lack of proper minifigures, so I pass. The weirdness however is a little bit more complicated thing. Of course I am talking of Nexo Knights, as the title of this post subtly gives away.
Lets first get a few things clear: I don’t like merging the way they mixed Sci-Fi with fantasy. It appears simply clumsy and desperately flashy. I only say castles with tank tracks. Same applies to most of the minifigures. They look more like a group of space-troopers than anything medieval or fantasy – well, except for some of the bad guys. So let’s have a look at them!
When I discovered Ultimate Lavaria (70335) in a Lego store in Germany, I was quite surprised that Nexo Knights had anything that could appeal me. But it had, and so I took her and her friend Ultimate Beastmaster (70334), who follows in Part 2 of my Nexo Knights series, home with me.
I’m not going to delve into the backstory too deeply here, just so much: they are both evil lava monsters (hence the name Lavaria!). But if you ask me, they could be just as well be demons from hell or dark jedi, if you put a lightsaber or two into their hands. Just think of Darth Maul – it works out pretty well!^^
Lavaria (lets drop the silly “ultimate”, as it is the only variant she appears as anyway) comes with bat-like wings (sure she is not a demon?), a fighting stick with long red blades, a display mount for her accessories and magical power shields, a pretty cool brick-built spider lower body and a set of spare standard-legs. It is really useful to have some standard legs kicking around (no pun intended) for attending business-meetings or other formal events. As with every Nexo-Knights set, her power shields can also be used to unlock special abilities in the Nexo Knights App, which I didn’t.
All in all I find the set pretty appealing. With extra points for using proper minifigures and not something else. The Lavaria minifigure is probably the best looking of the series, together with Jestro (not Jethro). The printing quality is excellent, if maybe a bit on the comical side of things. The spider leg part is a cool feature and the other accessories make completely sense too: snakes, bat-wings, spider legs – a nice arrangement of unsettling creatures!
The only criticism I have really is that her head fits pretty loosely on her torso. Especially when she is wearing her wings, her head can easily fall off. This might be just a singular issue and not a general one though and can easily be fixed with a thin layer of nail polish applied.
If you have a soft spot for weird minifigures and/or fantasy-settings, I can really recommend this set to you. It offers quite a lot for its small size and looks just lovely evil and creepy.
Pieces: 69
Rating 5/5
Little Worlds 